How to Speak Fluent English

‘Despite years of trying, I’m not able to speak fluently in English.’

‘I can read and listen almost anything, but I’m average at

speaking.’ ‘I often get stuck while speaking, because the
right words elude me.’

‘I first think in my native language, then translate into English, and then
speak.’

‘I hesitate when pronouncing certain words, not sure what others will think of my
mispronunciation.’

These, and other, thoughts may have crossed your mind while working on your English
speaking skills.

In this book, I’ll cover how you can address these and other challenges that may be
coming in your way to become better at spoken English.

I’m convinced about these methods because I’ve seen them work for teens
from underprivileged backgrounds who built their spoken English almost from
scratch (some of my observations are covered in the post). I’ve also experimented
many of the methods on myself to tighten my English language skills (mine is
already at a good level, and further progress isn’t easy to pull off).

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Let’s jump right into what you can do to speak English effortlessly.

1. Overcome hesitation and mental roadblocks in

speaking English

You can’t get better at speaking English without actually doing it. Despite knowing
this, many fail to speak enough for following reasons:

1A. Fear of making mistakes

Remember, no one has ever become an expert at anything without making hundreds
of mistakes. Neither will you. So, go out and make mistakes as long as you learn
from them and improve.

1B. Fear of getting mocked at by friends

Friends will mock. Friends will try to pull you back into the comfort zone of the
group. But when you’ve to face the implications of poor communication skills in
landing a job, career progression or something else, you’ll be the one who
will face it. Not them.

Sometimes, it’s good to think about yourself.

1C. Lack of motivation

Think of how strong communication skills can change your life. For many, it can
dramatically flip careers – nature of job as well as remuneration.

1D. “I just don’t have the talent to speak fluent English”

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And because you think so, you don’t try hard enough. (Why try when talent – and
not effort
– is the reason for fluency?)

In reality, no one has ‘spoken English’ or ‘written English’ genes that make her/ him
naturally gifted in English Language Skills. Becoming a fluent speaker is about
practicing the skill and adopting the right methods.

2. Create an immersive environment

An immersive environment is one in which you speak, read, write, and listen only in
English. Though longer the better, such session could be for just thirty
minutes in a day.

So, surround yourself with English language. This is the fastest way to

fluency. Matthew Youlden, who speaks around twenty languages, mentions ‘living

the language’
(creating an immersive experience, in other words) as one his three golden rules to
learn
languages:
Speak it, read it, write it, dream in it, sing in it.

Let’s look at few case studies to appreciate how important immersive environment is in
learning languages:

2A. ‘Language Pledge’ at Middlebury Language Schools

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Founded in 1915, Vermont-based Middlebury Language Schools offer undergraduate-
and graduate-level instruction in 11 languages, usually in 6-8 week programs.
They require a strict ‘Language Pledge’ from their students, which means you’ve to
speak, listen, read, and write only in the language of your study. If you fall
back on any other language, you’ll be expelled from the program.

According to them, the Language Pledge ‘plays a major role in the success of the
program’.

2B. How these two learnt four languages from scratch in 12

months?
Scott Young & Vat Jaiswal learnt Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, and Korean by living
in Spain, Brazil, China, and Korea, respectively for three months each. Watch their
dramatic improvement from Week 1 to Week 12 in the four languages in their TEDx
talk (duration: 63 seconds):

https://youtu.be/G1RRbupCxi0
They started from scratch. In the beginning, they had to often refer to dictionary
and Google translate. And after three months, they could live in those countries
entirely in the local language.

However, it wasn’t living in these countries per se that helped their fluency. (In
the full talk, they mention the example of an American businessman who married a
Korean woman and lived in Korea for 20 years and yet failed to pull off a decent
conversation in Korean.) What

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catapulted their spoken skill in these languages is the pledge to speak only in the
local language. That is immersion.

Scott says that this immersive learning was so effective that his fluency in Spanish
after three months was far better than his fluency in French after staying in France
for a year and deliberately studying French on an earlier occasion.

2C. My observation at a non-profit organization

I’ve visited few Delhi centers of Freedom English Academy (FEA), a non-profit
organization founded by well-known spiritual leader Deepak Chopra. At FEA,
students – mainly high school and older – from families with limited means get free
grooming in spoken English. At its dozens of centers in Delhi and few other cities in
North India, several batches, each 105- minute long, run through the day from 7
AM to 9:30 PM.

Many students make dramatic improvements in their spoken English in 12-odd months
they spend here. And the most important reason for improvement is strict
adherence to communication in English during those 100-odd minutes. No matter how
lame your English is, you can’t utter a word in your native language. (When
everyone speaks in English, good or bad, individuals naturally get comfortable
speaking in English without the fear of being judged by others.) In other words,
each session is an immersive experience (in English).

I observed that students who had access to an immersive environment even outside FEA
hours did even better. For example, two sisters – both FEA students – who spoke in
English with each other even at home and who also taught English to younger kids
had better spoken English skills than other FEA students. Then there is a young boy
who converses in English with his teacher where he goes for private tuition. He too
is one of the better ones.

I’ve also spoken to few students who dropped out because of various reasons, and
almost all of them admitted that their level (of spoken English) slided after
they left FEA because they didn’t speak English as often as they used to when
at FEA.

During my visits, I’ve come across students who switch to their native language,
Hindi, at home even though their siblings at home can speak in English. This was
revealing. They are more comfortable speaking in English at FEA than at home, even
though they have access to person(s) to speak to at both the places.

FEA students improve despite not being enrolled (some are, most aren’t) in an
English- medium school because they speak freely in English in those immersive
sessions. (Attending an English-medium school doesn’t hurt though. It only
helps.)

How to create an immersive environment?

You certainly don’t need to travel to a country where English is the first
language.

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You can create an immersive environment by speaking to, say, few like-minded
friends only in English. (More on this later in the post.) No switching to your
native language even if you get stuck. You don’t need to talk to everyone all the
time in English, but whenever you speak to these friends, you should
automatically switch to English.

If you watch programs on TV and other devices in your native language, switch to
programs in English.

Do the same for reading.

The beauty of forcing yourself into an ‘English only’ environment is that you
learn the most- used vocabulary, phrases, and grammar rules first (this is more
true of a newbie in English), and therefore make quick progress in the
beginning.

If you can immerse yourself in an environment wherein you’re constantly exposed

to English – speaking, listening, and reading – and seek improvements, you too
will improve.

Let’s come to tactics now.

Spoken English, in nutshell, is right

words (vocabulary) in the right order
(grammar) with the right sounds
(pronunciation and intonation).

The tactics hereinafter will broadly

address one or more of these three.

3. Listen a lot especially if you’re a beginner

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Babies listen a lot – for several months, in fact – before they start speaking.
Listening is arguably the most important input in improving speaking.

How listening helps?

Listening helps your spoken English at several fronts, and, a good part, it can easily
replace your time-wasters such as commuting:

Listening exposes you to spoken English, which can be somewhat different from
written English.
Grammar rules are more often broken in spoken English. Fragments – as opposed
to complete sentences – are more common. So are contractions.

‘I want to complete this task by tomorrow

afternoon.’ ‘I wanna complete this task by
tomorrow afternoon.’
You’ll sound stiff if you speak the way of the first sentence. Second is how
you speak in real conversations. First is how you write.

Similarly,

‘How is it going?’ vs. ‘Howzit

goin?’ ‘How are you?’ vs.
‘How’re you?’
In conversational English, we use more phrasal verbs, idioms, and slangs, which
you’ll pick more from listening.

Listening improves your pronunciation.

In fact, that’s the way many catch mispronunciations (many don’t even know
they’re mispronouncing words by the hundreds) in their speech, which
otherwise can carry on forever. This has been dealt in greater detail
later in the post.

Listening teaches you intonation.

For the uninitiated, intonation is the rise and fall of voice when speaking.
Whereas pronunciation focuses on the sound of words, intonation focuses on the
entire sentence. This video explains intonation beautifully (duration: 06:04
minutes):

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 https://youtu.be/GPcBJfBTlNo
With the right intonation, you bring clarity to your message (emphasis at a
wrong word can change the message) and rhythm to your speech.

Listening, like reading, exposes you to new words in context, which you can
explore later on in a dictionary. It also reinforces your existing
vocabulary.

What to listen?
You can listen to almost anything. These days, you can find plenty of audio and
video content on any topic on the internet. However, try to filter the content with
few broad rules:

You should be able to understand most of the stuff, say to the extent of 75-80
percent. If the English you’re listening to is too beyond your comprehension
level, you’ll soon tune out, and you’ll likely not sustain your practice. If
you’re a beginner, you can start with the content meant for children, and, as
you improve, you can gradually raise the level.
The content should be useful. For example, if you’re a working professional,
you could pick the content from your industry. TED talks are an option for
anyone. Don’t go for entertainment just to keep your interest alive. Why not
kill two birds with a stone – improve your English and learn something
useful.
Listening to songs is not a good option because if you’re like most you won’t
understand most of it (see rule # 1). Moreover, songs aren’t close to real
conversations, because they typically exaggerate many words, which is markedly

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 different from what happens in a regular conversation.
Unless you want to work with American people in future, don’t feel compelled
to watch American programs or movies. (However, if you’re comfortable watching
them, then it’s a different thing.) Same applies to other accents.

How to listen?
If you’re listening to content only somewhat above your comprehension level, you
wouldn’t have to strain yourself too much to comprehend it. While listening,
observe if any word is pronounced different from what you’re used to, observe how
some words are stressed more than others, observe the pauses, and note down any
word whose meaning and usage you aren’t sure of (to refer to dictionary later on
and add to your vocabulary).

Accomplishing so many things simultaneously may seem daunting, but it’s not that
hard. If you focus when listening, you would.

In case you fail to grasp certain part of the audio, feel free to steel a glance at
the transcript. (If the content is too far from your comprehension level, you’ll
be referring to the transcript too often, spoiling your experience and likely
making it unsustainable. Moreover, if your attention is constantly getting drawn to
the transcript, you’ll pay less attention to listening.) Most video and audio
content these days come with transcript, often referring to time in the audio/
video to make it easy for you to search. On YouTube, specifically, you can switch
on the transcript-scroll on the right hand side by clicking on the three dots and
then picking ‘Open transcript’.

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If the transcript isn’t arranged time-wise on a content, just do a ‘control + F’
(keyboard shortcut for search function) on the transcript and type in a word you
heard just before or after the stuff you struggled to comprehend.

You should also pause the audio/ video after hearing a sentence you find bit
challenging or novel in terms of intonation and pauses, and say it loudly. After
your take, replay the sentence and see how you fared. Such repetition will be
even more useful if you’re a beginner.

If you’re a beginner, you can get more from your listening

practice through…

If you’re a beginner, you can get more (and hence move faster through your
beginner level) by occasionally pausing the audio/ video after 1-2 sentences and
repeating what you heard verbatim, imitating pauses, stress, and speed of the
speaker.

Better yet, instead of repeating verbatim, speak what you heard in your own

sentences. If you stumble, listen to the part again and repeat the above

exercise.

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4. Keep a speaking journal
There’re plenty of short, standard responses in spoken English you can use in your
own conversation. Note them down in a diary whenever you come across them, and
glance through them once in a while. You can use the same diary to note down
words for vocabulary and/ or pronunciation. Here are few examples of such
expressions:
Examples of standard responses in English
You’re welcome.
Thanks for having
me.
Can I get your name,
please? Could you pass that
box, please? Please excuse me
for a moment.
Sorry, I can’t hear you. Could you speak a little
louder? I’m sorry I didn’t get that. Could you
repeat yourself?

Acing such commonly-used expressions will lend some fluency to your speech, and –
as you’ll see later in the post – will also curb your habit of first thinking in
native language before speaking.

5. Read out loud

Reading out loud does few things for your spoken English:

All sounds coming out of your mouth are a result of your vocal organs such as
tongue, lips, and throat working in some combination. If your vocabulary is
limited – which is the case with most of us – many of your muscles in these
organs would be under- exercised, because you pronounce only limited set of
words. To give you a parallel, have you experienced multiple aches in your
body after playing a new sport even if

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 you had been exercising your body for years? Your body aches because the new
sport exercises your previously under-exercised muscles.
Reading out loud exercises many more muscles in your vocal organs because
you speak out few new words every day. Vocal organs accustomed to
producing wide variety of sounds will produce more fluent sounds when
you speak.

While reading out loud, you also discover words you mispronounce.
When you read something silently, you don’t hear your sounds. But when you
read out loud, you do, and in the process you hear few words whose sounds
don’t seem natural to you. This detection happens subtly, and you’ll get
better at it with practice. I’ve stumbled upon most of my 3,400+ words whose
pronunciation I needed to perfect through this method. I’ve covered this in
detail in my post on pronunciation.

Through reading out loud, you can also practice intonation (varying stress on
different parts of the sentence).

I read out loud twice daily (each session lasting around five minutes). I started
with newspaper, but after I noticed improvement in my diction – it took few months
though – I added variety to my reading-out-loud material. Now I also have
conversations (Google ‘scripts’ or pick fiction books) – that’s close to real
situations – and few tortuously tough reads such as this.

Exaggerate when reading out conversations. Speak out as if you’re portraying the
character in the conversation.

(Note: if you’re at a place where reading out loud could be embarrassing, read with
your vocal organs at full blare, but muzzle your voice. You’ll still reap most of the
benefits of full- blown reading-out-loud.)

Reading out loud has worked for me to the extent that it has helped improve my
diction even in my native language. There are no shortcuts though. You’ve to
practice regularly for few months before you notice the first green shoots.
Because I’ve improved as a result of reading out loud, I’ve made it a daily
ritual. (Progress toward a meaningful goal is probably the biggest motivator.)

6. Think in English
This can really do wonders to your English-speaking prowess.

Even if you’re at a decent level in spoken English, you likely first think in
your native language, then translate into English, and then speak. This results in
pauses and slows down your speech, affecting – no, killing – your fluency.

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This thinking while speaking, however, is a tiny fraction of all the thinking you
do in the day. If you’re not intently focusing on something, say at work, then most
likely you’re engrossed in one or the other thought. Isn’t it? It just happens
automatically all the time.

If you can think this thinking in English instead of your native language, you’ll not
only get plenty of additional practice, but also eliminate the pauses arising out of
silent language translation while speaking.

However, this is easier said than done.

One way to change this long-standing habit is to start thinking in simple English
words and expressions. So, if you’re at home, take out few minutes and start
thinking (or saying) whatever you see around in English – table, table cloth,
juicer, lamp, kitchen sink, kitchen cabinet, trash can, doormat, carpet, and so
on. (These are nouns, and you’ll soon exhaust them, at least at a particular
place. So repeat the exercise at other places too. Even outdoors.) Key is to do
this really fast (as soon as you spot the thing), even at the cost of accuracy.
Otherwise, your propensity to first think in native language will get time to sneak
in.

Add verbs too to your practice (to describe actions around you). For example, think
‘opening the bag’ when you see someone opening his bag. Or ‘whiling away time’ when
you see two persons gossiping. If your vocabulary is limited, you’ll sometimes
fumble for the appropriate word. But that’s OK. You can skip such situations
without a word or expression.

Gradually, you can move to thinking (or speaking) in full sentences to describe
things or actions around you.

Another way to control thinking in native language is to ace standard expressions in

English (covered earlier in the post). If you know an expression well in English,
you would be much less likely to think circuitously – first in native language
and then in English.

7. Speak with others

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I know a person who can comfortably read – and understand – almost any magazine
or book. He is equally proficient in listening most type of English programs.
But, as it may sound strange to you, he comes a cropper when speaking in
English.

Reason?

He has almost never spoken in English because his profession doesn’t require him to
and otherwise too he doesn’t because people around him don’t speak in English in
their day-to- day lives.

Sounds familiar?

You can read and understand anything.

You can listen and understand
anything.
But you’ll falter at speaking if you haven’t taxed your vocal organs enough.
(Because the person in the above example can read and listen, he has some
vocabulary and grammar. But without enough speaking, he can’t construct sentences
and pronounce many common words.)

I observed the same at FEA, where some students could understand English before
joining the program, but could barely speak. It was their continued effort at
speaking in those sessions at FEA that catapulted their English from mere
understanding to speaking.

Practice (or speaking) is the king to become a better speaker.

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So, practice. Practice regularly. Make it a habit to speak in English whenever you
get an opportunity: friends, colleagues, clients, strangers, and even customer care.
If you leave it to the elements, you would drift to the default option – your native
language – because that’s easy. You need to be deliberate about speaking in English,
howsoever discomforting it may be. Can you learn swimming standing on the
ground? No. You’ve to jump into water.

To get a base level of practice every day, ask 2-3 friends (you don’t need a
crowd) whose English-speaking skills aren’t too different from yours to become
your speaking partner. Make sure they too are committed. You need not always meet
in person to practice though. Most times, you can chat on phone. Also, super
important, ask for feedback from your friends as well as others you speak to
and try to incorporate that feedback.

If you want to practice even more or if your friends aren’t regularly available or
you can’t find a speaking partner, you can even take to speaking alone. Speaking
alone too will render most of the benefits that accrue from speaking to others.

You can speak alone unscripted or scripted. The next two sections will cover the
two.

8. Speak alone without a script

You may not always have the luxury of having a speaking partner at arm’s length or
phone call away. Speaking alone – loudly though – is the way to squeeze in more
speaking practice.

Earlier in the post, we learnt how all our skills are fundamentally rooted in the
neural connections that form as a result of what we do in the physical world.
Even if you speak alone, you’ll still build most neural connections – and
thicken them with myelin – related with spoken English.

You can speak alone when you’re away from prying eyes (otherwise, people may
think you’re crazy). And if you can’t find solitude, just switch off your mobile
phone and pretend

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you’re talking to
someone. What should you
talk about? Anything
under the sun.
You can pick any topic to speak on. Topic is less important. More important is
speaking, exercising your vocal organs, and spotting mistakes, if you can.

You can pick a topic you feel passionate about. You can speak on how your day
unfolded. You can speak on a breaking news of the day. You can speak on any past
event from your life. You can even give sound to your thoughts. (Unless you’re
focusing on something, your mind will be tirelessly engaged in one or the other
thought. Just express those thoughts verbally.)

9. Speak alone with a script

Mimic television (or any screen) programs. With inexhaustible 24×7 supply of
content on television, this method will also solve the problem of constantly coming
up with new topics to speak on. This, however, is not for beginners.

I’ve done this, and it’s effective. Here is what you can do.

Pick up any channel, mute the television, and give a running commentary of what you
see happening there.

If two persons are engaged in a dialogue, take turns to speak for each. Don’t bother
about what they are actually speaking (television is on mute, right). Observe
them and say whatever you think best describes their facial expressions and body
language. You would be off on content more often than not, but that’s fine.

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If it’s a narrative, say a car chase, just describe the scene as it unfolds. Speaking
out a narrative is much easier than speaking out a dialogue because in the former you
can see what’s happening.

You can add variety to your practice by working with different types of programs –
movies, sports, wild life, and so on. A fight scene, for example, will force you
to speak at a faster pace than, say, a canoeing competition.

Sid Efromovich, who speaks seven languages, did something similar to clock in speaking
practice when learning a new language. He took to ‘shower conversation’ (self-talk
during shower), wherein he spoke for both the sides of a conversation, thereby
getting a more complete practice, something you get mimicking TV on mute. To
quote him:
And it’s [shower practice] great, because you don’t depend on
anything on anyone to get your practice, and I did this for
years.

10. Improve vocabulary

(Some of the words in this section are in red font for a reason, which you can
find at the end of the section.)

Do you sometimes pause while speaking as you struggle to think of an appropriate

word for what you want to say? Inadequate vocabulary is the reason for such pauses,
and they derail fluency, dent confidence big time.

BTW, even if you don’t pause, you may be describing a thing, a situation, or an
action in a long-winded way, which again signals average communication skills. To
give an example, you’ll impress others when you say ‘pluck a fruit from the tree’
but will look average when you say ‘took out the fruit from the tree’.

However, you don’t need a stellar vocabulary to achieve fluency. Here is a

commonsensical representation of how fluency would vary with proficiency in
vocabulary:

If the level of your vocabulary is too basic (zone A), it’ll seriously hamper your
fluency. That’s why this is also the zone where you can improve your fluency the
most by working on your vocabulary. Once you reach or are already in zone C,
you’ll pause less, but in this zone the incremental impact of additional vocabulary
will be lesser (represented by relatively flatter curve). In this zone, you’ll
be largely fine on fluency even if you don’t improve your vocabulary much
hereafter. Having said that, however, a strong vocabulary will stand you out.

(Please note, here we’re talking about fluency attributable only to vocabulary.
Fluency is a result of other factors too, which we’ve discussed elsewhere in the
post.)

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In nutshell, you need to reach certain threshold on vocabulary before your pauses
disappear.

How do you improve vocabulary?

Only very few take proactive steps

to improve vocabulary. Vast
majority doesn’t. That’s why
most adults improve vocabulary at
a meagre rate of 25-50 words a
year, which comes mainly from
reading and listening we do in
our daily lives.

However, reading and listening

add words predominantly to your
passive vocabulary – words you
can understand when reading or
listening, but rarely use in
speaking or writing. They don’t
add much to your active
vocabulary (words you can use when
speaking and writing).

Most of us have large repository of passive vocabulary, but only a small

fraction of it is

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active:

We associate our vocabularies with

passive vocabulary (ability to
understand in reading and listening),
and therefore most of us mistakenly
believe that we’ve large
vocabularies.

An efficient way to improve vocabulary

is to leverage your large existing
repository of passive vocabulary and
shift some of it to active vocabulary.
(That’s what I’ve done with 7,500+
words.) And the best way to achieve this
is to note down words as and when you
come across them, note their
meaning(s), and, equally important,
their multiple usages in the form of
examples. You can easily look meaning(s)
and usages of any word on online
dictionaries such as dictionary.com
and Oxford Learner’s Dictionary. Mere
noting down, however, is not
sufficient. You also need to review
them at spaced intervals and use them.

I’ve covered this topic in detail in another

post, which talks about my experience of going through the above process for more
than 7,500 words in a way that enables me to use these words when speaking and
writing, the Holy Grail of any vocabulary-building exercise. (Building
vocabulary by going through ‘vocabulary lists’ is largely ineffective because you
can’t bring them to use when speaking and writing.)

Before I end this section, let me explain why I wrote few words in red font. These
are few of my earlier passive words which I’ve now shifted to active, and therefore
I can use them in my speech and writing.

11. Improve pronunciation

During conversations, do you sometimes hesitate speaking words whose
sounds (pronunciations, in other words) you aren’t sure of? Few
examples:

Bastion Cache

Connoisseur Echelon

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 Gourmet Hypocrite

Jugular Midas

Realm Rigmarole

Sleuth Trio

(You may download the above table as image

here.) If you’re like most non-native
speakers, you do.
Mispronunciation is one of the fastest ways to stand you out negatively if the
other speakers catch it. And, conversely, correctly pronouncing difficult-to-
pronounce words (you can take the above list as a benchmark) will quickly stand
you out positively.

Bad pronunciation is rampant even among fluent non-native speakers. I’ve no

statistics on this, but from many people I’ve observed I believe 90+ percent of
fluent speakers working in white collar jobs in reputed organizations make
pronunciation mistakes, degree varying of course.

It’s not surprising though.

Non-native speakers learn pronunciation by listening, and most of it comes from

listening to others while growing up. But because lot of pronunciation going around
is not correct, we absorb incorrect sounds and perpetuate this cycle. Since there
is scarce institutional intervention, including from schools, on pronunciation, the
vicious cycle largely continues.

Unless you take conscious steps to break this cycle, you’ll find it difficult
to improve pronunciation. The most common way I’ve seen people improve their
pronunciation (I commonly ask people what they do to improve their
pronunciation) is to make note of the word when it is pronounced differently
(from how they do) by an expert (news anchor, native speaker, a renowned
speaker, and movies to name few). S/he would then type the word on Google or any
online dictionary to listen the pronunciation and confirm what s/he picked from
the expert. Otherwise, the cycle rarely gets broken, and people continue
mispronouncing in perpetuity.

Learning pronunciation is about getting familiar with the sounds. You’ve to first
make an effort to hear those sounds 1-2 times in the beginning and then as those
words keep coming up in your listening, they embed for long. (Reading out loud –
covered in section 3 – also helps in consolidating new pronunciation you learn.)
Pronunciation btw is one of the easiest components of spoken English.

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Reading and grammar are less important for spoken
English
Let’s take
each. First,
reading.
Reading can help you in speaking – especially if you’re a beginner – if you read
books with lots of dialogues (found mostly in fiction books). Reading can also
help you indirectly in speaking by improving your vocabulary. However, in the
overall scheme of things, reading makes smaller impact.

Second, grammar.

In spoken English, we break grammar rules many times more than in written
English. They’re relatively less important, but nonetheless know the basic rules –
tense, subject-verb agreement etc. – at least.

Speaking fast is not the same as fluency

Many, often influenced by movie characters, mistakenly believe that emulating rat-
a-tat of a machine gun makes them ‘fluent’.

Not really.

Have you listened to top political and corporate leaders speak? They aren’t express
trains. They’re thoughtful. They’re measured. They’re full of pauses, sometimes
too long for comfort.

The pace should come naturally to you and it should make what you’re speaking
comprehensible. Moreover, a slower pace will provide you more time to think while
speaking and hence you’ll make fewer mistakes.

Keep these fundamental tenets at the back of your

mind
To cap this post, I’ll share few fundamental tenets I’ve learnt which will be useful
to you:

Reaching a high level of excellence takes time. Anyone offering a wonder

solution that can make you fluent in 30 days is making a spurious claim.
Progress will be slow. It’ll take several months or few years to reach an
expert level. Your performance may even dip sometimes, which can be
frustrating, but what’s important is an upward trajectory in the medium to
long term. (A parallel would be a fluctuating, yet rising, stock, which may
sometimes dip.)

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 Discipline is important. Thirty minutes every day is many times better than
five hours on a Sunday. (Will going hungry for three days and then eating one
marathon meal work for you?) So make your practice a daily habit. And maintain
the discipline even if the practice is discomforting for you.
Observe your progress. It’s easier said than done, though. Because progress
is slow, you won’t notice it unless you consciously look out for it.
Why observe progress?

Because progress toward a meaningful goal is probably the biggest motivator one
can have. When you see your methods are paying dividends, you’ll gladly adopt
even an uncomfortable practice. When I observed that I was using right
pronunciation and more apt words in my conversations (that’s real progress), I
streamlined and increased my efforts on improving my vocabulary (7,500+ now)
and pronunciation (3,400+ now). Without progress, I wouldn’t have been able
to sustain an arduous daily practice, which btw seems a breeze now.

Repetition or regular use is the key. Otherwise you’ll lose it. As far as
English is concerned, thankfully there are so many daily opportunities to
surround yourself with it.
You can squeeze in most of your English-learning activities in the time you
otherwise waste – commute, wait time, standing in queues, or speaking to
people in your native language.
If need be tweak the methods to suit your style. Experiment, if need
be.
Your ability to speak fluently is not an ingrained quality that some have
and some don’t. It also doesn’t have correlation with your intelligence.
Anyone can ace it. If you put in the hours and constantly seek improvements,
you too would be there in due course.

I’ll end with the story of Demosthenes. As a young man, he suffered from
speech impediment, but he was determined to improve. According to legends, he
spoke with pebbles in his mouth, which made him exert super-hard to get the
words out. This

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improved his diction. To improve projection of his voice, he practiced speeches
while running and in the backdrop of the roar of ocean.

Demosthenes was a statesman and one of the finest orators in ancient Greece.

He went from one extreme to another in his speaking prowess. You don’t need to
adopt his methods, but, with practice and improvements, there is no reason why you
can’t become a fluent speaker.

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How to Build Vocabulary That Lasts – My Experience with
7,500+ Words?

(This book comes from my experience of adding 5,000+ 7,500+ words to my vocabulary that I can
actually use when speaking and writing. What’s the point if you can’t put it to use, right? In this
book, you’ll see decent dose of scientific principles and vocabulary exercises I adopted to
accomplish this.)

Don’t you get impressed when a news anchor or other proficient speaker uses just the
perfect word, and not a long-winded explanation, to describe a situation without a pause? Those apt

words are a result of a large active vocabulary.

We’ll learn more on what active vocabulary is later in the post, but in short it means vocabulary
you can actually use when speaking and writing, the holy grail of any vocabulary- building exercise.
If you introspect, you’ll realize that although you can understand lots of words when reading or
listening (called passive vocabulary), you can use only a minuscule fraction of that in speaking and
writing (called active vocabulary).

This post focuses on, first, building active vocabulary and, second, making this process efficient by
building on words you already know – passive vocabulary – thereby making for faster progress.

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Let’s start with few examples of what apt or ‘just the perfect word’ means. (You may take this as
a test.)

Look at following pictures and tell what word(s) best describes what’s happening there.

Image source

‘Dropped’.

Not the best response.

A better word is ‘emptied’. Even ‘dumped’ is great.

A crisp description of the above action would be: “The dumper emptied (or dumped) the stones on
the roadside.”

Image source

‘Took out’.

No.

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‘Pluck’ is a better word.

Image source

‘Is your dog dangerous?’

‘Does your dog attack?’

Both are fair descriptions, but a better question would be: ‘Does your dog bite?’

If you notice, these words – empty, dump, pluck, and bite – are simple. We can easily understand
them while reading and listening, but rarely use them in speech or writing.

Does it sound familiar?

Why vocabulary is important?

Have you come across a person pause far too often, fumbling for the right word for what s/he
has in mind? It’s in mind, but the person can’t find the word for it.

That’s the result of inadequate vocabulary.

It can speed-break your speech, and, worse, dent your confidence.

A less extreme, more common, inconspicuous situation is where you don’t pause often, but you use
imprecise words, long-winding explanations to drive your message. Example:

‘The bridge was destroyed (or broken) by the flooded river.’ Vs.

‘The bridge was washed away by the flooded river.’

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Both will convey the message, but the latter will stand you out.

Little wonder, studies point to a correlation between strength of vocabulary and professional
success. (Though there are plenty of studies linking professional success with fluency in English
overall, I haven’t come across one linking it with any other component – grammar and
pronunciation, for example – of English language.)

Earl Nightingale, a renowned self-help expert and author, in his 20-year study of college graduates
found:

Without a single exception, those who had scored highest on the vocabulary test given in college,
were in the top income group, while those who had scored the lowest were in the bottom income
group.

He also refers to a study by Johnson O’Connor, an American educator and researcher, who gave
vocabulary tests to executive and supervisory personnel in 39 large manufacturing companies.
According to this study:

Presidents and vice presidents averaged 236 out of a possible 272 points; managers averaged 168;
superintendents, 140; foremen, 114; floor bosses, 86. In virtually every case, vocabulary correlated
with executive level and income.

Can this be a motivation for you?

If you need more convincing, read this:

7 Reasons Why Learning English Is Important? [With Examples and Studies]

Because active and passive vocabulary have been referred several times in this post, let’s
understand the difference between the two before getting into the thick of things.

What is active vocabulary and passive vocabulary?

Earlier, I referred to the words ‘dump’ and ‘pluck’. You’ll probably understand the meaning of
these words when reading, but, if you’re like most, you don’t use them in your speech or writing.
You likely don’t even use far simpler words such as ‘claim’, at least in your speech.

However, you use words such as ‘eat’, ‘sell’, ‘drink’, ‘see’ and ‘cook’ quite regularly.

The former list of words – dump, pluck, and claim – forms passive vocabulary. Through reading
and listening over the years, you’ve gathered words in your vocabulary that you can understand, but
they don’t flow into your speech or writing. That’s passive vocabulary.

In contrast, words in your active vocabulary – eat, sell, drink, see, and cook – flow into your speech
and writing effortlessly, without pause.

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Many mistakenly believe that they’ve strong vocabulary because they can understand most words
when reading and listening. But the real magic, the real use of vocabulary is when you use it in
speech and writing. When you evaluate your vocabulary against this benchmark, your confidence
in your vocabulary will likely be shaken.

For non-native speakers, active vocabulary is a tiny fraction of their passive vocabulary. (Note:

while the proportion of the inner circle

(red) and square (yellow) – active and passive
vocabulary – bears some resemblance to
reality, the outer rectangle (blue) is not
proportionate because of paucity of space. In
reality, the outer rectangle is much bigger,
representing hundreds of thousands of words.)

There are plenty of words, almost inexhaustible,

sitting underutilized in your passive vocabulary.
Wouldn’t it be awesome if you could move some
– or most – of them to your active vocabulary?
That would be easier too because you don’t
have to learn them from scratch. You already
understand their meaning and usage, at least
some. That’s like plucking – to use the word
we’ve already overused – low hanging fruits.

Some of you may wonder, though: “Is my

passive vocabulary sizeable enough for me to
just shift some of the words to my active
vocabulary and not worry about hunting new
words?”

Your passive vocabulary will, of course, depend on how much reading and listening you’ve
accumulated over the years. Unless it’s too low, your passive vocabulary is large enough for you
to scout just few completely new words occasionally (blue region in the image above).

A word of caution here. When picking new words, don’t get seduced by difficulty (or rather rarity in
day-to-day use) of the word. Use of such words doesn’t make you look smart. It makes your
communication incomprehensible and it shows lack of empathy on your part. So avoid learning
words such as ‘soliloquy’ and ‘twerking’. And certainly avoid ‘cetaceans’ as

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a replacement for ‘dolphins and whales’. The more the word is used in common parlance, the
better it is. (The only exception to this I can think of is if you’re prepping such words for a test.)

Let’s dive into the tactics now.

How I added more than 5,000 7,500 words to my active vocabulary?

(Note: To provide an illustration of some of the words that have now entered my active
vocabulary, I’ve highlighted these words in red font in step 1. I could understand these words
earlier, but not use.)

1. Collect words, preferably passive

The first step is to get the words, preferably passive, you want to add to your vocabulary.

I started building my vocabulary list by noting down passive words – and occasional new words
– I came across during my reading and listening. (My passive vocabulary was strong, but active
was average. Those with limited passive vocabulary may have to list somewhat higher
proportion of new words, but even then your list will be dominated by passive words.)

Once I had 20-25 words on the list, I would check the meaning, and equally important the
usage in the form of examples, of each word on dictionary.com and copy-paste them on a word
document. Thereafter, I would take a print and go through it few times over the next few months.

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Few months after I started this exercise, one fine day the proverbial light bulb lit when I
realized that I had started using some of these words in my speech as well as writing.
(Although I had started using the words some time back, the trickle by now had become a thin,
noticeable stream.) Buoyed by the green shoots, I became more deliberate about improving
my vocabulary. In the next few weeks, I streamlined the process:

1. So far, I was getting few words per week through reading and listening. I decided to up this. I
dusted off my Collins Cobuild English Language Dictionary and started noting down words
alphabetically directly from there, all the while making sure they belonged to my passive
vocabulary.

However, I didn’t stop my earlier practice of drawing words from reading and listening. But this
now formed a minuscule (under 10 percent) proportion of the total volume.

Some of you may get spooked at this stage imagining the ocean of words this exercise would
result in. It was voluminous, no doubt, but – as you’ll see later in the post – manageable over
several months. And some of you may be surprised that I’ll finish – the exercise is still underway
– the entire dictionary with only 6,000+ 7,500+ words (update: I’m done) although a dictionary
typically has hundreds of thousands of words. (Oxford English Dictionary, for example, contains
170,000 words.) This is because I’m covering key passive words, and that’s what is required. If
you do this exercise, you too will end up with a similar number.

Shifting just few thousand words from passive to active vocabulary can lift your
communication skills to a higher pedestal. (Communication skills, of course, depend on
number of factors, vocabulary being one of the strong ones.)

2. Whenever I got time, I copy-pasted meaning and usage of these words from dictionary.com
on to my word document. After I had 30-40 pages, I would print them and place them in a
folder. A sample:

Slew
a. A large number or quantity: a whole slew of people.

b. The authorities announced a slew of measures to halt the violence.

c. There are a slew of hearings on the topic of financial reform scheduled over the next few weeks
in Congress.

Slice/ Sliced

a. A part, portion, or share: a slice of land.

b. To cut into slices; divide into parts

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c. To cut through or cleave with or as if with a knife: The ship sliced the sea .

d. After following Franklin around for three days, investigators recovered DNA taken from a slice
of pizza Franklin ate.

e. Dusty paths lined with lanterns led us to our camp, a slice of dramatic Arabian luxury.

Let’s call this master page.

I also took a separate printout of just the list of words. The list for the above sample, for
example, looks like this:

3600. Sleep like a log/ top

3601. Slender

3602. Slew

3603. Slice/ Sliced

3604. Slick

3605. Slide

3606. Slight

3607. Sling

Let’s call this list page.

2. Go through few words every day

I go through 12-13, looking at their meaning and usage, followed by a quick 60-second review to
cap. This takes 15-20 minutes. If you want to be regular at it, fix a particular part of the day when
you take this up. (I cover one list page – see last image – in three days, and each such page
accommodates 37 words. That’s the reason for 12-13 words a day.
However, you don’t need such pace. As you’ll see toward the end of this post, even if you ace a
word a day, you’ll be better than most people around you in the medium term.)

A tip here: make use of usage beyond just understanding how a word is used in sentences. To get
more out of it, also look at how grammar, punctuation, and other words and phrases have been
used in those sentences. You can even mark anything that attracts your attention on the print.

3. Review yesterday’s work within a day

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Within a day of learning those 12-13 words, I review them. Here is what I do to get the maximum
bang for the buck (I’ll explain why this works in a short while):

I carry the list page (unlike master page, this one has only words) with me and whenever
I get time I look at a particular word and recall its meaning (sometimes it could be more
than one) and as many sentences (usage, in other words) as possible containing that
word. I aim for at least five usages. Sometimes, I come up with just two. Sometimes,
seven or eight.
These usages aren’t necessarily the same that I copied in the master page. But because
I’ve understood the meaning and have seen few usages in the master page, I can generate
my own. Let your imagination run wild when thinking of these. Let few of them sound silly.
Doesn’t matter. Not always possible, but wherever you can, try to come up with few usages
that you’ve seen, heard, or experienced yourself. Nothing like anchoring what you’ve learnt
to real-world experiences to consolidate the meaning and usage of a word.

I complete this first review of 12-13 words in 10-odd minutes, and this time comes
entirely from time-wasters such as commute and waiting time. That’s why I carry the list
page with me.

If I get stuck at one or two usages, I give up only after giving a fair amount of thinking. In the
evening, I do a quick check with the master page to see if I missed any meaning or a
particular type of usage. (Each list page – 37 words – has approximately five
corresponding master pages. Because of the bulk I don’t carry master pages, and refer to
them in the evening.)

(If you notice, the two sets of pages act as flashcards. The list page provides cues and the master
page contains the answer.)

In the initial months, I used to come up with usages containing only the word I looked at in the list
page. But later on, as my vocabulary swelled, I started using multiple words in the same usage.
For example, I used two words in one usage here: He had unfettered access to the powers that
be.

4. Continue spaced repetition

I review the same set of words the same way few more times – after a week, a month, and three
months. These repetitions, along with the first one within a day, constitutes what we call spaced
repetition, the best way to embed anything to your long-term memory. In short, this process helps
you retain stuff in your brain for long. You can use it even in your academics. I’ve used spaced
repetition in variety of scenarios and have found it to work beautifully. You may learn more on this
topic here (the image below depicts increasing gap between two reviews, an essential part of
spaced repetition):

10/2
0
Adopt Spaced Repetition System. Retain More of What You Study.

Note: I use physical papers as flashcards for

spaced repetition. Feel free to use an app or
any other method that works for you.

Next up are three vocabulary activities I

practice to consolidate the vocabulary I’ve
learnt and, more importantly, make it easier to
actually use in written and verbal
communication. That’s why you’re acing
vocabulary, right? To use in speech and
writing. There are no prizes for building lists
that you can’t use.

Blachowicz, Fisher, Ogle, and Watts-Taffe, in

their paper, point out this yawning gap between
knowing the meaning of words and using them
in sentences:

Research suggests that students are able to

select correct definitions for unknown words
from a dictionary, but they have difficulty then
using these words in production tasks such as
writing sentences using the new words.

It’s even more difficult in verbal

communication where, unlike writing, you
don’t have the luxury of pausing and recalling appropriate words.

The Holy Grail for application of vocabulary is to use it in verbal communication where you’ve to
come up with an appropriate word in split second. The following three vocabulary exercises will
prepare you for this goal.

5. Vocabulary exercise I: Create thematic webs

When reviewing from the list page, I also occasionally think of other words related to a particular
word. Web of words on a particular theme, in short, and hence the name ‘thematic web’. These
are few lists I’ve actually come up in my reviews:

(Note: where there is a string of words, the main word has been underlined. And, the theme for
each group has been mentioned in the square bracket.)

If I see the word ‘gourmet’ in my list page, I’ll also quickly recall all the words related

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 with food: tea strainer, kitchen cabinet, sink, dish cloth, wipe dishes, rinse utensils, immerse
beans in water, simmer, steam, gourmet food, sprinkle salt, spread butter, smear butter,
sauté, toss vegetables, and garnish the sweet dish [Food]
Prognosis, recuperate, frail, pass away, resting place, supplemental air, excruciating pain,
and salubrious [Health]
Showy, gaudy, extravaganza, over the top, ostentatious, and grandstanding [Showing off]
Suave, urbane, rustic, debonair, polished, ill at ease, charismatic, give a good account of
yourself, and personable [Impression you create]
Restive, expectant, hysteria, swoon, resounding welcome, rapturous, jeer, and cheer [Crowd
behavior]
Deluge, cats and dogs, downpour, cloudburst, heavens opened, started pouring,
submerged, embankment, inundate, waterlogged, soaked to the skin, take shelter, run for a
cover, torrent, and thunderbolt [Rainfall]
Sleepless, restless, roll over, toss and turn, roll out, and insomnia [Sleep]

(If you notice, words in a particular theme are much wider in sweep than just synonyms.)

However, in the beginning, when you’re still adding to your active vocabulary in tons, you’ll
struggle to go beyond 2-3 words when thinking out such thematic lists. That’s absolutely fine.
But try thinking out such webs even if your words are simple and few.

Alternatively, you can take a slightly more advanced route and make full sentences on a theme. An
example from the rainfall theme:

‘It rained cats and dogs (or poured) inundating (or water-logging) the city. The water eventually
receded, leaving thick sludge behind.’

Why thematic web, though?

Because that’s how we recall words when speaking or writing. (If you flip through Word Power
Made Easy, a popular book on improving vocabulary by Norman Lewis, you’ll realize that its
each chapter represents a particular idea, something similar to a theme.) Besides, building a
web also quickly jogs you through more words.

6. Vocabulary exercise II: Describe what you see around

In a commute or other time-waster, I look around and speak softly an apt word in a split second for
whatever I see. Few examples:

If I see grass on the roadside, I say ‘verdant’ or ‘luxurious’. If I

see a vehicle stopping by the roadside, I say ‘pull over’.
If I see a vehicle speeding away from other vehicles, I say ‘pull away’.
If I see a person carrying a load on the road side, I say ‘lug’ and ‘pavement’.

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Key is to come up with these words in a flash. Go for speed, not accuracy. (After all, you’ll have
similar reaction time when speaking.) If you can’t think of an appropriate word for what you see
instantaneously – and there will be plenty in the beginning – skip it.

This vocabulary exercise also serves an unintended, though important, objective of curbing the
tendency to first think in the native language and then translating into English as you speak. This
happens because the spontaneity in coming up with words forces you to think directly in English.
You may learn more on how to control thinking in native language and other strategies to
improve your spoken English here:

How to Speak Fluent English – A Comprehensive Guide?

Last, you can also use this exercise to assess the level of your current vocabulary (for spoken
English). If you struggle to come up with words for too many things/ situations, you’ve job on
your hands.

7. Vocabulary exercise III: Focus on one object/ person

Another freestyle vocabulary exercise I practice during time-wasters is to focus on a single person
and describe her/ his actions, as they unfold, for few minutes. An example:

“He is skimming Facebook on his phone. OK, he is done with it. Now, he is taking out his
earphones. He has plugged them into his phone, and now he is watching some video. He is
watching and watching. There is something funny there in that video, which makes him giggle.
Simultaneously, he is adjusting the bag slung across his shoulder.”

The underlined words are few of the new additions to my active vocabulary I used on the fly when
focusing on this person.

Feel free to improvise and modify this process to suit your unique conditions, keeping in mind the
fundamentals such as spaced repetition, utilizing the time you waste, and putting what you’re
learning to use (exercises in step 5, 6, and 7 are three of the ways).

Why I learnt English vocabulary this way?

For few reasons:

Covering mainly passive vocabulary has made sure that I’m building on what I already know,
which makes for faster progress.
Learning vocabulary in significant volume is a challenge. Bigger challenge is to retain what
you’re learning. But the biggest is to recall an apt word in split second while speaking.
Spaced repetition and exercises described in step 5, 6, and 7 precisely prepared me for this
real-world test. That’s what you want, right? Use the vocabulary you’re learning in your
speech and writing.

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 Looking at just a word and recalling its meaning and coming up with rapid-fire examples
where that word can be used introduced elements of deliberate practice, the fastest way
to build neural connection and hence any skill. Exercises in step 5, 6, and 7 too do the
same. For the uninitiated, deliberate practice is the way top performers in any field
practice. You may learn more on this here: Deliberate Practice Examples From
Different Fields

We learnt ways to improve active vocabulary, but what about the traditional way of learning words
from the context while reading and listening.

Learning vocabulary from just the context is inefficient

Most of us learn vocabulary ‘less violently’ from reading and listening by figuring out what a particular
word means in the context of other words and sentences around that word.

This definitely works, but is this the best way to build vocabulary, especially active
vocabulary?

To quote Blachowicz, Fisher, Ogle, and Watts-Taffe from their paper (referenced earlier):

Consider learning from context. Although there is research indicating that exposure to new words in
written contexts results in some development of general vocabulary, it is difficult to predict what
words can be learned through an examination of the context. Context does not always reveal
meaning; indeed, it is sometimes misleading.

Even the meaning may not always be clear. (To give an example of this, till recently I thought
‘square meal’ means two meals a day.) We’re not even talking of more certain misses such as
multiple meanings and usages many words have, which can best – and more efficiently – be
skimmed by pouring through those multiple meanings and variety of precise sentences containing
that word.

In his book Word Power Made Easy, Norman Lewis laments the tortoise-like rate of
vocabulary-building among adults:

Educational testing indicates that children of ten who have grown up in families in which English is
the native language have recognition vocabularies of over twenty thousand words. And that these
same ten-year-olds have been learning new words at a rate of many hundreds a year since the age
of four. In astonishing contrast, studies show that adults who are no longer attending school
increase their vocabularies at a pace slower than twenty-five to fifty words annually .

Adults improve English vocabulary at an astonishingly meagre rate of 25-50 words per annum.
(Many are surprised when you tell them that they’ve small vocabulary. “But I read all the time,” they
say. They’ve large passive vocabulary, but not active.)

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And how do most improve vocabulary? Learning words in context through reading and listening.
You need to take a step further. You need to explore words further in a dictionary. Know precise
meaning. Other meanings too. And, equally important, see few sentences where the word has
been used.

Don’t ignore following when building your vocabulary

1. Simple verbs
You wouldn’t usually bother to include words such as ‘slip’, ‘give’, and ‘move’ in your list because
you think you know them inside out, after all you’ve been using them regularly for ages.

I also thought so… until I explored few of them.

I found that majority of simple words have few common usages we rarely use. Use of simple words
for such common usages will stand your communication skills out on count of simplicity.

An example:

Slip
a. To slide suddenly or involuntarily as on a smooth surface: She slipped on the icy ground.

b. To slide out from grasp, etc.: The soap slipped from my hand.

c. To move or start gradually from a place or position: His hat slipped over his eyes.

d. To pass without having been acted upon or used: to let an opportunity slip.

e. To pass quickly (often followed by away or by): The years slipped by.

f. To move or go quietly, cautiously, or unobtrusively: to slip out of a room.

Most use the word in the meaning (a) and (b), but if you use the word for meaning (c) to (f) – which
BTW is common – you’ll impress people.

Here is another example:

Unmanned
a. Without the physical presence of people in control: an unmanned spacecraft.

b. Hovering near the unmanned iPod resting on the side bar, stands a short, blond man.

c. Political leaders are vocal about the benefits they expect to see from unmanned aircraft.

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Most use the word ‘unmanned’ with a moving object such as an aircraft or a drone, but how about
using it with an iPod (see (b) above).

2. Phrasal verbs and idioms

Phrasal verbs are verbs made from combining a main verb and an adverb or preposition or both.
For example, here are few phrasal verbs of verb ‘give’:

Phrasal Verbs – Give

Giveaway

Give back

Give in

Give out

Give over

Give up

(You may download the above table as image here.)

We use more phrasal verbs in spoken English than in written. Our conversations are full of
them:

“I went to the airport to see my friend off.”

“He could see through my carefully-crafted ruse.” “I

took off my coat.”

“The new captain took over the reins of the company on June 25.”

Unfortunately, you can’t predict the meaning of a phrasal verb from the main verb. For example,
it’s hard to guess the meaning of ‘take over’ or ‘take off’ from ‘take’. You’ve to learn each phrasal verb
separately. However, you’ll be fine focusing on just the common ones.

What about idioms?

Compared to phrasal verbs, idioms are relatively less used, but it’s good to know the common
ones. To continue the example of word ‘give’, here are few idioms derived from it:

Idioms – Give
Give and take

Give or take

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Give ground

Give rise to

Give way

(You may download the above table as image here.)

I don’t have the exact number, but my list would contain around 15 percent phrasal verbs and
idioms.

3. Commonly-used nouns
One of my goals while building vocabulary has been to learn what to call commonly used objects (or
nouns).

To give an example, what would you call the following?

Image source

It is used to filter tea.

Answer: Tea strainer.

You would sound far more impressive when you say, “My tea strainer has turned blackish because
of months of filtering tea.”

Than when you say, “The implement that filters tea has turned blackish because of months of
filtering tea.”

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What do you say?

More examples of Commonly-used nouns

Back story

Bed linen

Blinds

Breadwinner

Corner shop

Door knob

Saucer (Most call it ‘plate’.)

Skull and crossbones (We see the symbol often – dangerous and pirate flags – but struggle to
say the word for it.)

(You may download the above table as image here.)

‘Should I follow what you did?’

Not at this scale – 37 words every three days.

Accumulating such large volume of vocabulary at a high quality – and that’s more important
– wasn’t breeze for me, but, to be honest, was easy. But still you’re highly unlikely to pull this off at
this scale.

Even if you follow the process I outlined earlier in this post for a word a day, you’ll be ahead of
99.99 percent of people in the medium term. (Remember, most adults add just 25-50 words a
year to their vocabulary. So a word a day will make you 10x faster, which is humongous.)

And even if you want to achieve more than a word a day, start small. Start at a word a day.
Streamline process, build habit, and then expand.

A practical approach is to note down words you come across in your daily reading and
listening. Ideally, the words you note down should be:

Commonly-used words and

Those you don’t use in your writing and speech.

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‘Does my brain have enough capacity to store so much information?’
Some mistakenly believe that they can’t retain so many words along with their meaning and multiple
usages because their brains have limited memory space.

According to some estimates, human brain has memory storage capacity close to 2.5
petabytes (or a million GB). If your brain worked like a digital video recorder in a television, this
storage capacity will be good enough to store 3 million hours (or approximately 300 years) of
TV shows.

That’s infinite for all practical purposes.

You’re not going to run out of memory space in your life time.

My progress so far

When I started my vocabulary journey in the beginning of 2016, I accumulated words as and when I
stumbled on them in my reading. I didn’t follow spaced repetition too in the strict sense.

Few months into this, I observed I had started using some of these words in my writing as well
speech. This was real bottom-line, real success, which propelled me on a path that was more
deliberate, efficient, and scientific – the one you’ve read in this post. (This is akin to scaling up
after a pilot has worked.)

So in mid-2016, I started with the first page of my Collins Cobuild English Language Dictionary,
noting down words sitting in my passive vocabulary. Most of them were simple, commonly-used
words that I hadn’t been using in writing or speech. In the remaining half of the year, I covered
nearly 1,200 words, taking the total for the year to 1,574 words.

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Somehow, the momentum got lost in January and February 2017 when I could barely complete
twenty words. I came back on track from the beginning of March, and since have continued my
breakneck speed of 37 words every three days without diluting my process. It’s not that I didn’t
miss a single day in the last nine months. I have, may be on 3-4 occasions. But each time I
bridged the gap the very next day. (Quick tip: if you’ve to make up for a lost day in any pursuit,
spread the work over two sessions – one morning, one evening
– and not finish in one. You’ll retain better this way. It’s similar to feeling bloated if you eat too
much in one sitting after a fast.)

At my current pace, I’ll finish 2017 at 3,900+ words, taking the tally to nearly 5,500 words
(adding 2016 numbers). After this, I’ll be left with another 1,200+ words to go (update: this
turned out to be way more – 2,000+), which I’ll finish in the first half of 2018. Imagine, the
entire dictionary will be done, and this will be at a quality that enables me to use these words.
And most of this was accomplished in times that otherwise are wasted. (Words will flow into this
list even after completing this first bout, but that will be a trickle, like it has already happened to
my pronunciation list.)

This exercise is an example of achieving much more than you expect if you do something day in
and day out over a reasonable period of time. You may read more on this here:

You Can Achieve Much More in 3 Years Than You Think

More than 10 words a day in detail for over a year is, no doubt, arduous… but it wasn’t for me.

Two reasons:

As mentioned earlier, I tasted success at the beginning of my journey – I started using the
words in my speech and writing. Success toward a meaningful goal is the fastest way to
build passion for something, and I was no exception. (I’ve experienced this multiple times
and if you take a hard look in the rearview mirror about things you’re motivated about, you’ll
find a similar underlying story.) And if you develop passion for something, the effort into it
looks effortless
Building sound vocabulary is probably the hardest part in improving communication skills,
and for precisely this reason strong vocabulary can be a differentiator over others. This and
the fact that I’ll use it for the rest of my life were strong motivators for me to undertake this
mammoth exercise.

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